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Fragmented Feminisms in the Digital Age: Writing a History of the Present and Tracing the Conditions of Possibility of the #metoo Movement from an Intersectional Framework
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- Author / Creator
- Gerbrandt, Emily
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In 2017, the #metoo movement took Hollywood by storm and brought international attention to the widespread issue of sexual violence. In the aftermath of its fervour, scholarly inquiry into the #metoo movement and its influence are just beginning. Feminist response to and engagement with the #metoo movement has been varied. This thesis considers three key exploratory questions: where did the #metoo movement come from? What is the #metoo movement? Furthermore, where is the #metoo movement going? Approaching these questions from a post-structural, intersectional feminist theoretical framework, I employ a genealogical approach to writing a history of the present of the #metoo movement and trace a number of the conditions that have made the #metoo movement’s popular emergence possible. Specifically, I attend to the role that social media, digital activism, and anti-feminist backlash have played in the emergence of the #metoo movement. Discussing these questions over the course of three chapters finds that the #metoo movement can be thought of as a contested and fragmented space of counter-public anti-sexual violence activism and as an alternative justice mechanism. At the same time, #metoo’s co-optation by white women in news media, entertainment, and popular culture poses significant dangers that could thwart intersectional social action. The #metoo movement presents numerous possibilities for enacting transformative social change, at the same time as it risks thwarting such efforts. Namely, the #metoo movement holds a significant possibility to challenge the mystical authority of formal justice mechanisms and realize a path to justice that centralizes the multiplicity of Survivor's needs and concerns. At the same time, there is nothing inherently feminist, nor is there an inherent-ness to #metoo’s feminism. The contrasts, conflicts, and contradictions within #metoo and across its relations to feminist activism and scholarship,
highlights the urgency behind flagging the way #metoo has been activated and co-opted to reproduce the conditions necessary for intersectional forces of oppression and domination. -
- Graduation date
- Spring 2020
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- Type of Item
- Thesis
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- Degree
- Master of Arts
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- License
- Permission is hereby granted to the University of Alberta Libraries to reproduce single copies of this thesis and to lend or sell such copies for private, scholarly or scientific research purposes only. Where the thesis is converted to, or otherwise made available in digital form, the University of Alberta will advise potential users of the thesis of these terms. The author reserves all other publication and other rights in association with the copyright in the thesis and, except as herein before provided, neither the thesis nor any substantial portion thereof may be printed or otherwise reproduced in any material form whatsoever without the author's prior written permission.